Che Committed Suicide (29 page)

I was wondering how I would pass my time on the island and whether I should buy myself a fishing rod and folding chair before going or buy it there when the phone rang.

‘Inspector Costas Haritos?’ The voice was that of a young woman.

‘Speaking.’

‘Inspector, a few days ago you had asked for an appointment with the politician, Kyriakos Andreadis.’

I couldn’t believe my ears. If I’d been told that the three yobs had been released and that Yanoutsos had been looked up in their place, I wouldn’t have been more surprised. I only just managed to whisper a ‘yes’.

‘Mr Andreadis will expect you at two o’clock today in his office. Please don’t be late because at three he has a parliamentary session.

‘I won’t be late. Where is his office?’

‘34 Heyden Street, on the third floor.’

I hung up and tried to take in what I had just heard. What had happened to change Andreadis’s mind? Most probably the arrest of the three yobs and the attempt by the government to pin the whole business on the extreme right. If that were the case, Andreadis must have information to dispel that scenario and he probably wanted to release it anonymously so as not to compromise either himself or his party. I phoned Sotiropoulos to find out if he knew anything more about it, but his mobile phone was switched off. The people at the channel told me that he still hadn’t arrived.

I had another three hours to kill so I decided to stick to my
previous
plan. This time, the kiosk owner was surprised to see me buying all the newspapers given that the arrests had been made two days before and nothing sensational had happened the previous day. He racked his brains thinking he must have missed something, but I left him wondering.

My turn to be left wondering came at the would-be cafeteria. Instead of the sourpuss waiter, an eighteen-year-old girl with
miniskirt
and platforms came over to me.

‘Where’s my usual friendly waiter?’ I asked surprised.

‘You mean Christos? He’s left. Every year around this time he goes to Anafi. He has some rooms there that he rents out.’

The strange thing was that I wasn’t glad to be served by a young girl; on the contrary, I felt peeved because Christos had spoiled my plans. At least the Greek coffee was still watery and that was
something
of a consolation.

Though forty-eight hours had already passed, the arrest of the three nationalists was still front-page news in most of the papers. This was the first thing in common. The second was the consensus of opinion. All the newspapers expressed objections to the arrests. The scale of the objections gradually rose from the mild reservations of the pro-government papers to the plain sarcasm of the opposition papers. Anyhow, the consensus of opinion, even with the political bent, testified to the fact that the ploy thought up by the
masterminds
was not working. It crossed my mind for a moment that perhaps this was why Andreadis wanted to see me. No doubt he had seen the morning papers, had decided that the time was ripe and had called me in order to speak to me. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that he wanted to open up a second front in order to put the
government
in an even more difficult position.

But what was I to do with Ghikas if things were as I imagined them to be? Should I tell him what I had found out from Andreadis? By rights, I ought to keep him informed. After all, he too had been left with his tail between his legs and I felt a moral obligation towards him. Then again, if some information should emerge from my meeting with Andreadis that I felt I should keep to myself, I would decide when the time came.

I took a last sip at the watery coffee and got to my feet. The Mirafiori was parked in Protesilaou Street. It was noon and the heat was at its most oppressive. By the time I had walked down Aroni Street, I was drenched in sweat and I stopped off at home in order to change my shirt. Fortunately, Adriani still wasn’t back so I didn’t have to do any explaining.

There was one long line of traffic all the way from Vassileos
Konstantinou
Avenue to Omonia Square. I turned into 3 September Street and, taking Ioulianou Street, I came out into Acharnon Street in order to find the beginning of Heyden Street. Number 34 was between Aristotelous Street and 3 September Street. I double-parked outside the apartment block, certain that the traffic wardens never passed by there.

The office of Kyriakos Andreadis was a spacious three-roomed flat of the kind they built in the sixties, in other words a good twenty square metres bigger than they built them today. I was received by a woman of around thirty, tall, slender, dressed impeccably and looking as though she had just come from the hairdresser’s. She had manners to match.

‘Please be kind enough to wait a moment, Inspector,’ she said on hearing who I was. ‘He’s on the phone. Can I get you something because he may be some time. Those phone calls are often like
personal
visits.’

I asked for a glass of cold water to go with the air conditioning that was working overtime and I waited, passing the time by looking at the photos on the walls, all of which showed a man of about sixty, always smiling and overjoyed, either giving a speech or standing beside a spitted goat with wine glass in hand. The other thing that made an impression on me was the amazing resemblance between Andreadis and his secretary. It didn’t take much for me to realise that he had hired his daughter. My suspicion was confirmed when she showed me into his office.

‘Inspector Haritos, Daddy.’

The man got up from his desk and came over to greet me with the same smile that he had in the photos.

‘Welcome, welcome!’ he repeated and, after shaking my hand, he led me by the arm not to the metal chair reserved for his voters, but to the sofa reserved for more friendly visitors and sat down beside me.

‘What is Doctor Ouzounidis to you?’

The question came right out of the blue and I was tongue-tied. How was I to explain my relationship with Fanis? If I said he was my in-law, it would be premature and a lie. To say my future in-law wouldn’t sound right. If I called him a friend, which was perhaps nearer to the truth, it would do him an injustice. Fortunately, Andreadis himself got me out of my difficult situation.

‘Fanis told me that you are to be his future father-in-law.’

‘The evidence seems to be pointing in that direction,’ I replied and we both broke into laughter.

‘You know, I owe him my mother’s life.’ He became serious. ‘I took her to the hospital one night with a severe heart attack and not only did he manage to save her, he also stabilised her condition. Since then, my mother swears by Fanis and won’t hear of any other hospital either in Greece or abroad. So when he phoned and told me that you wanted to talk to me, I couldn’t refuse him.’

If I had been told that the meeting had been set up by Ghikas, or the Minister or even the Prime Minister, I would have believed it more easily. Fanis was not in the plan. I could never imagine him picking up the phone and succeeding where Sotiropoulos had failed.

Andreadis looked at his watch. ‘So, ask me what it is you want because, unfortunately, I have to be in Parliament soon.’

‘I happened to see you on a TV programme following the suicide of Loukas Stefanakos.’

‘Ah yes. It was that fellow’s programme … what’s the man’s name?’

‘The reporter, you mean? It escapes me.’

If Sotiropoulos had heard us, he would have been hopping mad that he wasn’t a household name. But if Sotiropoulos’s name were to crop up, Andreadis may very well clam up out of fear that what he said would leak out.

‘First of all, I have to confess to you that personally I don’t believe that theory about right-wing extremists obliging a businessman and a politician to commit suicide.’ I said. ‘I can come right out and say it because I am officially on sick leave and so off-duty.’

A smile of pleasure appeared on his face.

‘At last, a member of the Police Force who thinks in the right way,’ he said with some satisfaction. ‘Because, in its panic, the
government
has come up with such a crude solution that it must take us all for fools.’

‘Certain information has come to my ears, nevertheless, and I’d like to verify it – let’s say out of personal curiosity.’

‘What information?’

‘Concerning the business relations between the families of
Favieros
and Stefanakos. I was informed that, apart from Jason Favieros’s construction company and Lilian Stathatos’s advertising company, there are two other consultancy companies for European
investments
that the wives of Favieros and Stefanakos are partners in. One of these operates in Greece and the other in Skopje, covering the Balkans. Favieros also had an offshore company Balkan Prospect, which operates a network of real-estate agencies throughout Greece and the Balkans, together with various construction companies. Finally, there is another offshore company owned by Favieros and Stathatos that deals in hotel and tourist enterprises.’

‘Thank God you’re a police officer and not a tax official. You’d have us all at your mercy,’ he said, without losing his smile. ‘So where are you leading?’

I began to explain to him the whole network of business relations linking Favieros and his wife with Stefanakos and his wife. I outlined my theory about the two bona fide companies, the construction and advertising ones, and how behind these operated the more shady ones, Balkan Prospect belonging to Favieros, and the consultancy companies and hotel enterprises.

He didn’t interrupt me even once, but nor did he show any great interest. ‘What is it that you want of me exactly?’ he asked
impatiently
when I had finished.

‘I’d like you to tell me if, in your opinion, there is anything unusual behind all this and how it might operate.’ I tried to
formulate
my question as innocently as possible so as not to bring him down to earth with a bang.

‘I see nothing unusual about it,’ he said, astounding me.

‘Not even in the way that Balkan Prospect runs its real-estate agencies?’

‘Why would I find it unusual? Every business operates by buying cheaply and selling dearly. If it doesn’t succeed in this in the first year, it will close.’

‘Yes, but the difference is not declared to the tax office. It goes straight into the pocket of the real-estate agency as undeclared earnings.’

He laughed. ‘Do you own the flat you live in, Inspector?’

‘No.’

‘Well, if you buy a flat for your daughter in view of her
upcoming
marriage, I suggest you don’t declare the whole amount to the tax office. No one does it. Consequently, the tax office doesn’t lose anything. It gets the tax it would anyway.’

‘Except that various Romanians, Bulgarians and Albanians end up paying more.’

‘Why do you just see the negative side? Personally, I’m only too happy when I see foreigners who came to Greece wretched and
miserable
succeeding in the space of a few years to become householders and property owners. It proves something about the dynamism of our little country.’

I saw that I wouldn’t get anything out of that conversation because I was coming up against the dream of every Greek to acquire his own flat. So I decided to change tack.

‘And the consultancy firms?’

‘Is it bad that there should be companies that advise Greeks how to take advantage of the funds made available by the European Union? On the one hand, we’re always complaining that we don’t absorb the funds given by the EU and on the other we accuse those who actually do something with them.’

‘I’m not accusing them. I simply wonder whether Loukas
Stefanakos
was using the political means he had at his disposal to secure the requisite participation of the Greek public sector in order that the company owned by his wife and Favieros’s wife could absorb the European funds.’

‘The important thing is that the funds are absorbed, not by which company they are absorbed.’

‘I imagine this was why that Balkan minister on the programme with you praised him so highly.’

Despite all my efforts, it seems I was unable to conceal my irony, because he registered it immediately and tightened up a little.

‘I don’t understand your irony. You have no idea of the
difficulties
these countries face in order to secure funding, credit and loans. Stefanakos helped them through the mediation of his wife’s
consultancy
firm.’

‘And a large slice of the funds went into the pockets of Mrs
Stathatos
and Mrs Favieros as a fee for their mediation.’

‘Isn’t it only natural that Greece should get something in return for the help it offers to a third country? Otherwise, what would be the incentive for such mediation? What does it matter if Stefanakos
channelled
the fee through the firm run by his wife and Mrs Favieros? After all, both Greece and the Balkan country benefited from it. The poor wretches in the Balkans recognised that and were grateful to him.’

I had no words to counter his. After all, I was a copper who dealt in dead bodies; I was neither a politician nor a financier. Andreadis, however, took my silence as acquiescence.

‘Everything you’ve described to me so far, Inspector, is in keeping with the rules of a self-regulating, free market. Our great success is that we managed to convince even fanatic leftists like the families of Favieros and Stefanakos to accept these rules and apply them. And now that we’ve convinced them after so many decades, you want us to accuse them of illegalities. For heaven’s sake!’

All his rhetoric had made him forget the time and he suddenly looked at his watch. ‘And now I’m afraid I have to go as I’m already late.’

He accompanied me to the door. He halted there and slapped me on the back. ‘We’ve won, Inspector. As a member of the Security Force, that traditionally has always been closer to our party, you yourself should be happy. Give my best regards to Fanis.’

He gave me another friendly slap on the back and handed me over to his daughter, who accompanied me to the front door.